Douglas:
That's why I had warnings on it, and why I really appreciate the feedback! The more confused people speak up about it, the better chance I'll have to make it actually work for people who aren't hopeless computer nerds like me.
Calculation automatically happens any time you change things (or it should!!). So you should be able to go to any number and edit it, then hit the enter key. As soon as you hit enter that box will automatically pin down with the number you supplied.
(I really really should make it work if you do that with the tab key, but I didn't want folks to be accidentally pinning down things they hadn't edited -- so that makes the response to tab more complicated).
(come to think of it, I should make it work with the 'undo' keys, too. Ick. Oh well, dog doo and undo -- they're just unpleasant things we have to deal with).
If you like a number that's not pinned down but you want to pin it down and change something else instead, just click on the 'pin' box, then unpin one of the boxes that lights up red.
If you don't understand what a number means -- leave it alone! It's leaving its guts on the table for all to see; I should have some way of hiding the more advanced stuff until someone clicks a button or something.
If you get it working, and you feel that I need to reword the directions on that page, please post a note here and I'll try to get the page changed.
I'm ass-u-me-ing that folks will notice that there's directions after the calculator on that page, of course.
John:
Have you tried it? It would be interesting for folks with planes that work fine to put their info in "backwards" (i.e., put in your battery pack, ending state of charge & flight time, or put in your number of cells and your motor or ESC's peak current capability) and see what airplane weight it recommends.